I followed Ariadne’s thread leading me out of the maze.
A slow process of many years, of trickery and wrong turns.

Thankfully there was no mythical beast to worry about here.

The maze was a rose garden of eternal twilight. It was beautiful.
Not everything beautiful is harmless.

I was pursued the entire time by whispers: taunts, threats, mocking laughter. Why leave at all, what if the whole world is like this?

Because if I never left, I would never know what the real world truly was, beyond the red and green stillness that concealed, that misled.

So I persevered. I found sunlight at last, and other people. No more thorns tearing at my skin to keep me inside.

It’s a hard world. But it is the real world. I couldn’t stay in the dark forever.